Adolescent Time Use, Risky Behavior and Outcomes: An
Analysis of National Data

Nicholas Zill, Christine Winquist Nord, and Laura
Spencer Loomis

Westat, Inc.

September 11, 1995

For the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning
and Evaluation

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Participating in positive, goal-directed activities
gives teenagers a chance to develop skills, build character,
and sample different fields of human endeavor. It may also
lessen their chances of engaging in risky behaviors, such as
drug use or delinquency, by occupying idle time,
strengthening commitment to school and other conventional
institutions, and exposing teens to beneficial peer and
adult influences. There has been considerable debate,
however, as to how effective youth programs are in
preventing misbehavior. More evidence is needed as to how
today's teenagers spend their time and whether constructive
activities help to deter problem behavior.

The present study made use of several large-scale data
bases to examine the time-use patterns of American
adolescents in the late 1980s and early 1990s, compare them
with those exhibited by young people 10 to 20 years ago, and
test whether participation in extracurricular activities
reduces the chances that young people will engage in various
risky behaviors. The data analyzed came from Monitoring
the Future (an annual survey of high school seniors),
the
Longitudinal Study of American Youth, the
National Education Longitudinal Study
begun in 1988, and an earlier longitudinal study
called High School and Beyond. The risky
behaviors studied were dropping out of school, having
children while still teenagers, being delinquent, smoking,
using marijuana or cocaine, and binge drinking.

The study found that U.S. teenagers have a lot of
discretionary time available to them and, for most, that
time is not being filled with activities that build
their skills or characters. For example, today's 10th grade
students devote on average only one half hour per day to
homework. Less than 20 percent of them read for pleasure
almost every day, only 15 percent work daily on hobbies,
arts, or crafts, and just 5 percent routinely use personal
computers for schoolwork or recreation. Less than a third
attend religious activities once a week or more, about a
fifth participate in youth groups or organized recreational
programs that often, and a similar fraction take weekly
classes outside of school in music, art, language, or dance.
One in eight takes weekly sports lessons outside of school,
while one in fourteen volunteers or performs community
service activities.

How then do teenagers spend the considerable amounts of
free time at their disposal? They watch television (two and
a half hours per day, on average); they talk with other
teens on the telephone (60 percent say they do so on a daily
basis); and they hang out with friends in malls and other
neighborhood hangouts (64 percent do this at least one or
twice a week). As they get older, they work for pay at
relatively low-skill jobs that do little to prepare them for
the more complex and demanding jobs at which they are likely
to later work. Sixty percent of U.S. 12th graders and 27
percent of 10th graders do seven or more hours of paid work
per week during the school year.

When the study compared adolescent time use in the 1990s
with that in the mid-1970s or early 1980s, overall patterns
were surprisingly similar. The changes found were mostly in
a negative direction as far as constructive use of time was
concerned. For example, high school students in 1990 spent
no more time doing homework than earlier cohorts did,
despite taking courses that were supposedly more rigorous.
Teenagers in the 1990s were less likely to read books, do
household chores, or attend religious services on a regular
basis than their predecessors were. Compared to the early
1980s, fewer students in the 1990s participated in band,
orchestra or chorus in school, in traditional hobby clubs
such as photography or chess, or in cheerleading or drill
team. On the other hand, almost as many went out for
varsity sports, and slightly more took part in academic
clubs, such as science, computer, or foreign language clubs,
math team, or debating society. Overall, however, the
increased emphasis on academics that has supposedly
dominated American education in recent years has not
resulted in much apparent change in intellectual effort or
studying behavior among American adolescents.

Not only is the time use of the average American
teenager relatively unproductive, there is considerable
inequality in the extent to which different groups of teens
use their free time in constructive as opposed to idle or
detrimental ways. Young people from families with low
levels of parent education or family income, who would seem
to be most in need of organized skill-building and
character-nurturing activities, were found to be least
likely to engage in such activities. Likewise, students
whose parents were uninvolved in the PTA and other
school-related activities did not participate in
constructive free-time activities as often, nor spend as
much time doing homework, as students with involved parents.
Students enrolled in general or vocational/technical
programs in high school had much less exposure to
extracurricular activities than students enrolled in
academic or college-preparatory programs.

The time-use patterns of 10th graders were predictive of
what they would be doing one year after high school. Those
who were "homework-focused" were twice as likely
to be enrolled full time in postsecondary school as those
who were focused on paid employment as 10th graders.
Conversely, those in the latter group were twice as likely
as those in the former to be employed full time after high
school. However, the link between doing more paid work as a
teenager and full-time employment as a young adult was
weaker than the association between doing more homework and
full-time college enrollment. This indicates that the jobs
that adolescents hold are not giving them the skills or
experience necessary to obtain stable full-time employment
after high school.

Time-use patterns of 10th graders were also predictive
of whether they would engage in a variety of risky
behaviors. For example, compared to those who reported
spending 1-4 hours per week in extracurricular activities,
students who reported spending no time in school-sponsored
activities were 57 percent more likely to have dropped out
by the time they would have been seniors; 49 percent more
likely to have used drugs; 37 percent more likely to have
become teen parents; 35 percent more likely to have smoked
cigarettes; and 27 percent more likely to have been
arrested. These significant negative relationships were
found after controlling for related family, school, and
student characteristics such as parent education and income
levels, parent involvement in school-related activities, and
students' grades. Up to a point, students who spent more
time (5-19 hours per week) in extracurricular activities
were even less likely to engage in risky behavior. However,
there was not as great a deterrent effect among those who
spent large amounts of time (20 or more hours per week) in
extracurricular pursuits.

One behavior that proved an exception to the rule that
extracurricular participation reduced risky conduct was
binge drinking. After other factors were controlled, time
in extracurricular activities did not show a significant
relationship with underage drinking. The difference may be
due to the greater social acceptability of drinking in adult
society, compared with cocaine or marijuana use, or to
another finding of the study. This was that one form of
extracurricular activity -- varsity sports -- actually
seemed to predispose young people to binge drinking.

When data on adolescent time use and risky behavior were
analyzed separately for males and females, similar
relationships were found. One difference was that the
deterrent effect of extracurricular participation on teen
childbearing was more clearly evident among females than
males. Similar relationships were also observed when the
number of activities in which students participated was used
as a measure of extracurricular involvement instead of hours
per week.

Participation in two specific forms of extracurricular
activity, varsity sports and music or drama, showed somewhat
different relationships to later risky behavior. Students
who participated in varsity sports were less likely than
non-participants to drop out of school or become smokers by
their senior years. On the other hand, student athletes
were significantly more likely to have engaged in
binge drinking, as noted above. Also, male (but not female)
athletes were more likely to have become teen parents. By
contrast, students who participated in band, orchestra,
chorus, or in a school play or musical were significantly
less likely than non-participants to engage in nearly all
the problem behaviors: dropping out of school, being
arrested, becoming smokers, using drugs, or engaging in
binge drinking. Female (but not male) performers were also
less likely than non-performers to have become teen parents.

The findings indicate that organized youth activities
can help to deter risky behavior in adolescence and young
adulthood. However, the effectiveness of an activity
depends not just on the degree to which it occupies idle
time, but also on the extent to which it develops skills,
creates challenges, and provides fulfilling experiences for
teen participants. It depends as well on the attitudes that
other participants have about engaging in specific high-risk
behaviors. If the group code encourages some forms of risky
behavior, such as binge drinking or sexual promiscuity,
participation in the activity may be counterproductive.